Authors: Scott Cramer
“Guess who came looking for you?” Mel asked.
Abby saw Toby walking across the parking lot, toward the jetty. “He just found me.” Not the least bit surprised, she let out a big sigh and signed off.
Toby was wearing a leather jacket, cowboy boots, and new jeans. He had told her that it was important for a lead negotiator to dress sharply. “People respect you when you look good. You get better deals.”
Abby thought there was another reason for the clothing he chose to wear. Toby blended into the crowd, an average looking boy with brown eyes that were at once shifty and pleading. He desperately wanted attention, to be accepted. Toby seemed to be forever hurting inside, and she hoped his new clothes helped him feel better about himself.
He scrambled up the boulders, and soon Abby was in his shadow. “You should have stopped by my place. I would have come with you.” He gestured to the jagged rocks where the water lapped the jetty. “What if you fell?”
“Toby, were you awake at six?”
He brushed away flecks of seaweed on a flat rock and sat next to her. “Abby, I would have gotten up for you.”
She smiled. “All right. Next time we have an emergency, I’ll bang on your door at dawn.”
“I hope the emergency is really bad,” he said.
Abby lurched forward and looked at him in disbelief. “What?”
He smirked. “I don’t mean life-threatening. A broken leg would be perfect.” He read her grimace. “Hear me out. When you trade something, you get the best deal when the other guy needs what you have. Supply and demand. The gypsies need medical care. The more serious the problem, the more they need us. Let’s make sure they tell us their news before we help them.”
She shook her head vehemently. “Toby, we’re not trading cod for batteries. We’re talking about people here.”
“Hey, it’s my call. I’m the lead negotiator.”
“No, it’s my call. I’m the medical first responder.” She narrowed her eyes. “Thanks to you, remember?”
Toby had nominated her for the position when Derek Ladd hooked himself with a triple-pronged bluefish popper, six months earlier. With the fluorescent orange popper dangling from his ear like hippie jewelry, Derek ran off the jetty screaming as a stream of blood poured down his neck. Everyone panicked, including Abby, but somehow, she managed to keep her panic bottled up. She snipped the barbs with the wire cutters and the hook fell out of his ear.
After her heroics, Toby had given a speech at the island council, arguing she should be the medical first responder. Abby had received a unanimous vote.
She glared at him until he lowered his eyes.
“We’ll help them first,” he muttered. “How’s Touk?”
Abby gulped. His sincere tone and the look of concern in his eyes caught her by surprise. She shrugged. “I was a picky eater at her age. Maybe it runs in the family.”
“Does she like pears?”
“Are you kidding me? She loves them.”
“I’ll get her a case. Some people owe me a favor. We’ll keep it between us, okay?”
Abby fixed her eyes on the horizon as if that might help anchor her turbulent thoughts. She’d do almost anything to help Toucan, and now, with a simple nod of her head, she could get her what she loved most. Touk might actually eat something. The secret deal, of course, would come out because keeping secrets on Castine Island was impossible.
Even if nobody ever found out about their arrangement, Abby knew that pears for Toucan would mean the community would receive less of something else. They always tried to share equally on the island, a code of fairness that separated them from the mainland. They had worked too hard to create trust to lose it over a case of pears.
“Thanks Toby, but Touk can eat what everyone else eats.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
Abby bubbled with guilt. “Can you get just a few cans?”
“No prob,” he nodded enthusiastically, oblivious to her conflicted feelings.
They sat without speaking for a few moments.
Toby broke the silence. “Before the night of the purple moon, this used to be my favorite spot to hang out. I had a good view of Al’s.”
Al’s, on Main Street, used to be the island’s only tavern. They had turned it into a game room with pool and ping-pong tables.
“I could see my father stumble out,” he continued. “He was usually drunk before dinner.”
Abby had heard stories about Toby’s father. If even half of them were true, she might be willing to admit that Toby’s life was better now than before the epidemic. She knew nothing about his mother, other than that she had left the island when Toby was very young.
“It must have been rough,” she said.
He didn’t say anything, his eyes focused on some distant point on the horizon. All of a sudden, he shot to his feet and pointed. “Look.”
Abby spotted the two sails. Nobody was going to believe it. Two boats were heading to Castine Island. She brought the walkie-talkie to her lips.
~ ~ ~
Jordan stood on the dock, watching through binoculars as the two-masted schooner executed a crisp tack, turning into the wind to change direction. It was easy to understand how Abby and Toby had first reported seeing two boats. From the snippets of conversation with the captain, Jordan had not realized that
Lucky Me
was such an incredible boat.
Several minutes later, the canvas sails spilled air and fluttered as the bow swung into the wind again. The two booms swung around and the sails billowed like cheeks puffing with air. The boat heeled high on its port side and picked up speed on its new direction. The gypsy crew were clearly expert handlers.
The schooner was about half a mile beyond the jetty, and it would have to buck a headwind of fifteen to twenty knots the rest of the way into the harbor. He estimated the gypsies would pass the tip of the jetty in thirty minutes. Once the boat moored, he and Eddie would race out to pick up the stricken gypsy. Eddie was the second-best sailor on the island, and Jordan was confident they could handle whatever came their way.
The Boston Whaler, tied to the dock cleat, had a full tank of gas. The twelve-foot powerboat with its seventy-five horse motor could fly.
Abby’s voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Do you guys have germ masks?”
Jordan saw a crowd gathering outside Sal’s where Abby was readying medical supplies. “What for?”
“One of them might have the Pig.”
“All set, over.” Jordan didn’t have a mask. Abby worried too much.
“Radio the problem as soon as you find out.”
“Roger that,” he replied.
The crowd outside Sal’s continued to grow, and a group of kids milled at the playground. A steady stream of kids on bikes and skateboards trickled down Melrose Street.
The big turnout didn’t surprise him. Gypsies stopped by the island regularly, and usually residents paid them little notice. But these gypsies were different. The news had spread that this was a survival story. Survivors rooted for other survivors.
When the schooner made its final tack before entering the harbor, Jordan gave a short blast on the air horn, and Eddie burst from the crowd and sprinted toward him.
He radioed Abby and told her they were about to head out. Then he climbed down the dock ladder and into the whaler. Eddie flew over the dock boards, put on the brakes, and unfastened the mooring line from the cleat. Jordan yanked the starter cord, and the outboard motor fired up, coughing out several puffs of oily, blue smoke. Eddie shoved the bow away from the dock and jumped in.
When Jordan pushed the throttle all the way forward, the bow lifted from the surge of power. Racing toward the schooner, he squinted from the spray peppering his face.
“I think I could be a gypsy,” he shouted above the roar of the outboard.
“Let’s do it!” Eddie replied without a moment’s hesitation. “Who should we put on the crew?”
If Jordan became a gypsy, he would go alone. He would not want any reminders of Castine Island. “Don’t say anything to Abby,” he told his friend.
“Yeah, she’d freak out.”
As soon as the gypsies passed the tip of the jetty, they lowered their after-sail, the triangular sail closest to the stern. Jordan motored to within fifteen feet of the schooner and counted two boys and two girls on deck.
The captain, wearing a yellow rain slicker, stood at the wheel, barking commands. She had a crew cut, the latest style for gypsy captains, and her voice resonated with authority. “Secure the mainsheet. Stand by to come about.” The bleary-eyed crew responded. Wet from the bow spray, they leaped, crawled, and wormed their way around the deck to perform the tasks. The schooner’s lines snapped and popped against the mast. “Coming about, hard-a-lee.” The captain spun the wheel and
Lucky Me
completed the tack and headed for a red mooring buoy.
Lying prone at the bow, a boy held the boat hook. He was as tall and lean as the pole in his hands. When the captain turned into the wind, the boy snagged the buoy line and secured it to a cleat. At the same time, a girl wearing a red bandana lowered the fore sail. They had made it.
Jordan motored beside the schooner and Eddie tossed a line to the captain.
“What’s the problem?” Jordan asked.
“A member of my crew needs her braces removed,” the captain explained.
He and Eddie traded glances. Eddie’s cheeks puffed out and he burst out laughing. Jordan joined in.
Jordan started to break the news to Abby over the walkie-talkie, but then froze.
A sudden wild scream sent a chill down his spine. The tall, skinny boy and bandana girl helped a girl up from below deck. Pale and trembling, she was a writhing mess of tears and disheveled hair. She looked about twelve, and she was covering her mouth with both hands, but it did little to muffle her screams. Her two escorts each gripped an elbow firmly, or she might have collapsed.
With a trembling hand, Jordan brought the walkie-talkie to his lips once more.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Colony East
“Compan…eee ATTEN-SHUN!”
Lieutenant Dawson’s command echoed off the building opposite the Biltmore. One hundred and five cadets stood before him in ten columns. Showing how their many drills had paid off, the older ones clicked heels together and tucked chins. Dawson’s sharp eye noted, however, the younger members of the company had a lot of room for improvement.
“At ease,” he barked.
The cadets relaxed. Scanning the faces and postures, he looked for flushed cheeks, slumping shoulders, any signs of illness. He’d have to take anyone showing symptoms to Medical Clinic 17 straightaway. Fortunately, they all seemed healthy.
“How many minutes?” a cadet shouted.
“Did we set a new record?” someone in back asked.
The record to assemble at parade rest once the national anthem had finished stood at eighteen minutes, forty-five seconds.
He started down the first column. “You know what my commander did when we wouldn’t stop talking?”
“He made you run, sir,” Jonzy shouted.
“Cadet Billings is correct. Do you know how far we ran?”
“Until everyone had fat blisters on their feet.” Jonzy answered.
“Is Billings the only one awake this morning?”
“No, sir,” they shouted in unison.
“I can’t hear you.”
“No, sir!” they boomed back.
They loved this game, and most days he did too. The sudden image of his baby daughter appearing in his mind gave him pause. Sarah seemed to visit his thoughts without rhyme or reason. He might think of his daughter in the middle of showing his math students how to solve a problem, or in the evening when he was brushing his teeth. There were hundreds of thousands of children like her outside the fences of the three colonies. Would the Navy and CDC perhaps try to help them survive someday? Dawson felt the anxious heat of laser stares as eager cadets waited to hear the time. He pulled his shoulders back and glanced at his watch.
“Twenty-two minutes, ten seconds.” Groans rippled through the ranks. “Tomorrow is a new day. Always strive to do better. Dis-MISSED!”
Biltmore’s cadets broke into groups, some heading straight to Grand Central Station, others waiting for friends in Hilton Company to catch up. Naval architects had turned the train station into the colony’s primary mess hall.
Dawson waited for Captain Hedrick, the leader of Hilton Company. One of two doctors at Colony East, she was the sole surviving member of the U.S. Army. At the onset of the epidemic, she’d been on special assignment, observing medical procedures on a submarine.
A stethoscope dangled out of the pocket of her white jacket. He guessed she was a year older than he, not yet thirty.
A Navy barber had recently done a number on her reddish blonde hair, but Dawson always found himself mesmerized by her green eyes. Whenever he spoke to her, he knew how intently she was listening because her eyes seemed to mirror his feelings. The captain led the cadets of Hilton Company with a soft touch and those caring eyes. He respected that style, even though he could never lead that way himself.
“Morning, Captain.”
“Good morning, Mark.”
He suppressed a smile. He liked that she called him Mark in public. He referred to her as Captain Hedrick in front of the cadets, because the higher-ups frowned on social relations among company leaders; it was an unwritten code.
They walked together, bringing up the rear of their respective companies. A plane lifting off caught his attention. The crew, he knew, was heading out to test bacteria levels across the region, as they had done every day since Colony East had first opened for business. It reminded him that everyone had a job to do, a role to play. That was the Navy way. If everyone followed orders and did what they were supposed to do, the colony would operate at peak efficiency.
A boy from Sandy’s company approached them. “Sandy, I got stung by a bee,” he sniffled.
She went down on one knee, held his arm and inspected the red dot. “Have you been stung before?”
He nodded, blinking back tears.
She probed the area of the sting with her fingertip and spoke to him in a gentle tone. “That’s good news. It means you’re not allergic to a bee sting. Ask the cook for some baking soda. Mix the baking soda with a little bit of water and put the paste on the sting.”